The Legend of Nick Valentine, Synth Detective
by Kattinja
Summary: The story behind Nick Valentine, a robotic detective met in Fallout 4. Follow Nick from the moment he wakes up, clueless, in the Wasteland and struggles to learn more about his new world and self while stumbling upon one adventure after another in the Boston Commonwealth. Eventually his gains notoriety and he lands himself a job as the world's only synth P.I. in Diamond City.
1. Chapter 1 - The Awakening

_Systems Online...Restoration 15% complete._

It was...a bad dream.

 _Restoration...35% complete_

The kind that you couldn't wake from. An unending darkness and...something. The glint of steel.

A whisper. A steadying hand on his shoulders. The flash of a white coat.

 _Restoration...65% complete. Initiating start up sequence. Power reserve levels 85%._

Something was very wrong. But he was trapped. Sleeping, dreaming. Memories flitted across the back of his mind, like a faint echo across a large canyon.

 _Restoration...80% complete._

Everything was wrong. He couldn't breathe. He was suffocating. He had to get out. Had to escape.

 _Restoration...95% complete._

 _Restoration 100%. Startup sequence complete. All systems nominal. Maintenance cycle terminated._

* * *

Nick Valentine woke up with the mother of all headaches.

No... that wasn't right. His head felt heavy, like his skull had been replaced with a bowling ball. His whole body felt stiff and unwieldy. For the longest time he lay there, on the ground, confusion growing as he wondered where he was and what he was doing here instead of in his bed at his apartment in the North End of Boston.

 _Something's gone down,_ he thought, _Something nasty. That's the only explanation for why I'm laying outside in the cold instead of in my nice, warm bed._ This wasn't a completely absurd conclusion. Nick had made a lot of enemies during his time as a detective both with the Chicago and the Boston Police Department. Any number of them could have jumped him at some point, left him unconscious.

Well, no use being lazy about it. Time to get up and face whatever situation awaited him.

Nick opened his eyes, and immediately realized that things were a lot more complicated that he could have anticipated.

For one thing, he was lying in a trash heap. That became apparent from the immediate sight of the piles of discarded metal around him, all rusted with age, with a half-gutted car thrown here and there and wet newspaper painted to the ground. And that was just what he could see from lifting his head.

The second thing was that Nick felt _off_. There was no other word to describe it. It had taken far more effort to lift his head than it should have. His whole body felt _alien_ , and the only explanation Nick had was that it was the after-effects of some sort of concussion.

He moved his arm as if he had never moved it before, forcing each muscle to move in sync so that it could reach down toward the ground, palm out (the ground felt weird, as if he touched it wearing gloves) and push himself upright.

And then he actually looked at his hands. They were pale, a sickly gray, far too pale to be healthy. He curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist, watching the strange skin move along the bone. _Is that my hand?_ thought Nick. Of course it was his hand. Stupid question. He was moving it, wasn't he? But the whole thing stunk to high heaven. Was he sick? That might explain the alien-inside-his-own-body feeling that he had.

He got himself to his feet, taking a moment to steady himself by leaning against a broken-down car. He was clad only in a pair of pale blue drawstring pants, barefoot, his sickly gray skin exposed to all the world.

A quiet world, as a matter of fact. Where was the familiar sound of honking cars? Birds tweeting? People shouting at each other in a dozen languages? He could hear the breeze, watch it pick up a piece of trash and toss it toward him, but other than that the world was silent.

 _Worry about that later,_ He told himself. For now, he just needed to focus on getting home. One step at a time.

Step. Nick tried to take a step forward, and for a moment he failed. It was like his body had forgotten how to walk. He looked down at his feet and consciously made the effort to put one foot in front of the other. Then he was walking, as if all he needed was the reminder. But he only made it a few feet before he stopped again and looked around him. At the piles of trash. At his pale-gray skin. At the silence.

"Just what is going on here?" Nick finally said aloud. His voice sounded scratchy and off, like it was coming out of an old tape player. "What the hell is wrong with me?" he voiced again.

Suddenly, it was like a switch flipping on inside his head. The moment he asked what was wrong with him, a stream of text appeared before his eyes, like he was staring at a transparent computer monitor.

 _Diagnostic routine initiated. Power reserves, 82%. Coolant supply: 64%. Motor controls functioning. Sensory inputs functioning. Error: dermis penetrated, loss of tissue 4%._

"What the hell?" Nick exclaimed as the text flashed before his eyes, all of it gone in less than a minute.

Nick took another few steps forward and caught sight of a large sheet of clear metal in front of him, lying up against a broken street light, not too rusted. Almost afraid of what he would find, he approached the metal cautiously, his gait awkward and stiff, and finally dared to glimpse himself in his reflection.

When Nick finally processed what he was seeing, he realized why his body felt so alien to him.

Because he wasn't in his body anymore.

* * *

Nick was a robot.

Or, more likely, he was trapped _inside_ a robot body.

Which made no sense.

It was utterly impossible.

And yet, there was no other explanation for why his eyes-formerly a nice, pleasant shade of brown-were now lit up a bright yellow, as if his eyeballs had been replaced with small headlights. And his skin-that gray that really was too pale to belong to a regular human-was torn in places, as if he had been cut. There was one particularly nasty cut up along his neck, a large flap of skin pulled away, revealing what was inside.

Nick _should_ have seen blood and muscle, maybe even a good ol' esophagus to boot. Instead, he saw metal. Cords of tubing. Blue liquid moving around inside. When Nick's jaw dropped open in astonishment, he saw the metal move inside of him, the gears turning, responding.  
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

Yet, at the same time, some inexplicable part of Nick actually thought that he shouldn't be surprised, like he had been a robot for some time, and really the fact that his bones had been replaced with metal and he had headlights for eyes was really all par for the course. But that was just nonsense. Nick remembered his life clear as day-his time working at the Chicago PD, his transfer to Boston PD, his parents. Jenny. He was very much a flesh-and-blood human being.

Not a robot.

Except, he was.

Nick had never heard of a robot with synthetic skin. The only robots he had ever met were the Mr. Handy types, the metal servants and chauffeurs and security guards and the like. The Boston PD employed robots, usually as muscle, backup to bring on a big collar. And while some of the robots Nick had met could be quite intelligent, they were still quite clearly not human.

Nick didn't look like himself-this new face of his was rather blank, boring, missing the crow's feet around his eyes and the crooked nose that Jenny liked so much. But regardless, he still looked very much like a human being. He bet he could even pass for one, at a distance. So he was a robot. But he was a very human-like robot.

Except he wasn't a robot. He was Nick Valentine. Born to Martha and Richard Valentine, brother of Gerard Valentine. Originally of Chicago, on temporary loan to Boston. Police Detective. Human being.

A real conundrum.

Nick spent quite a while staring at his reflection in that old sheet of metal, standing still (too still, he would realize later, for a human) as he processed all of this.

Finally, he blinked, and decided that there was nothing he could do about it now.

"Well Nick, so you're a robot," he told himself, speaking aloud to break the unnerving silence.

"So what? Yeah, it's a pickle, that's for sure, but there's nothing you can do about it right now. Maybe this is a dream, maybe you really did get hit on the noggin a bit too hard. But you can stand here and keep freaking out or you can do something about it."

This was sounding better. Nick was a man of action, after all. He could stand there and think about the implications of the fact that he was now a robot, the staggering impossibility of it, or just accept it for now and move on. He liked the latter idea better.

"Step one-figure out where the hell you are," Nick told his reflection. "Step two-figure out how to get back home. Step three-find out just who in the world got the bright idea to turn you into a robot. Step four-correct the problem."

Nick wasn't quite sure just how exactly the problem could be corrected. Finding the guy in charge of this whole nightmare was a good start. And with any luck, they would conveniently have his much-loved human body on ice somewhere, would realize the grievous error of their ways once he met up with them, and then be more than happy to reverse the procedure (whatever it was) so he could wake up back in his old self, resume his post at the police department, and continue about his merry life.

Right. In a pig's eye. But wistful thinking was all he had right now.

Anyway, it was all moot point if he couldn't even complete step one. So, time to figure out where he was.

Nick Valentine left the trash heap, slowly climbing his way around the piles of discarded metal and other debris. It was a larger area than he expected, but eventually he caught sight of a half-destroyed line of chain-link fence that likely marked the perimeter of the field. He also saw an old metal booth that looked like an office, near a metal gate that had fallen down and was lying haphazardly in the middle of a dirt road.

 _Abandoned_ , Nick thought. Everything around him looked like it hadn't been messed with in decades.

As Nick got to the entrance of the yard, Nick slowly realized that the junkyard wasn't the only place that had been abandoned.

It quickly became apparent that the junkyard stood at the edge of a small town. The entrance was on top of a slight hill, so looking down Nick could the dirt road turning into concrete and winding down into a series of buildings-stores and homes. A mix of brick and wood.  
All empty. Every single last one of them. As far as the eye could see.

The buildings were all falling apart, roofs collapsed, walls blown in. The road had been ripped up, dry weeds sprouting in the cracks, trash everywhere.

An abandoned town. Perfect. Just perfect. Whatever happened here, Nick hoped it was long gone now.

For a moment, as Nick surveyed the scene, he imagined the ghost of his partner on the force, James Dunbar, appearing before him. Dunbar always had a wise-crack about something. Impossible to take anything seriously, that guy. Even when he was ducking behind a wall as a crook with a gun came shooting after him.

Now Nick imagined James standing before him, that wide grin on his face, the hat crooked on his head.

"Well, Toto," James would say, "You certainly aren't in Kansas anymore, are ya?"

"No, buddy," Nick said to the ghost, his synthetic voice lingering in the empty air. "I most certainly am not."

And then he started to make his way into town.


	2. Chapter 2 - Rodents of Unusual Size

This town was the pits.

Nick Valentine had never seen such a dump before. It was like a bomb hit the place or something. Nick kept glancing through the empty buildings, hoping to find something to clue him into where he was and what was going on. He did manage to learn that the town he was in was called Compton, and it rested somewhere on the outskirts of Boston. He found some old, decaying newspapers that listed the date as October 23rd, 2077.

When Nick saw the date, he had to admit he was floored. If the newspapers were right (and there was no reason they shouldn't be) then he was missing nearly a year of his life. He couldn't even imagine what his friends on the force were thinking right now about him. Did they think he was missing? Dead? Nick was fortunate, at least, that he had no close ties anymore. His parents were long past, his brother estranged, and Jenny...well, Jenny was gone too.

But what had happened in his absence? Just what the heck was going on here? Nick wasn't sure what was more confusing-the fact that he was somehow now trapped inside a robot, or the fact that he was in some strange bombed-out town nearly a year after the last point he remembered.

Nothing to do but keep going forward. _Remember the steps, Nick_ , he kept reminding himself. _No use bogging yourself down with too many questions at once._

Nick finally scored dirt when he found an old boutique off the main street of town. Robot or not, he could sure use some proper clothes. The boutique was as hollowed-out and decayed as the rest of the town, but Nick found a basement that still had a number of clothes boxed up in storage. He shifted through the boxes until he managed to find a plain button-down shirt in good condition. He slipped it on, and even managed to find himself a tie. Nick was a tie-and-suit kind of guy, always had been. Jenny used to joke that he'd been born in a suit.

 _I may be stuck inside a robot, stranded in a wasteland of a town, but I'll be damned if I don't at least look presentable._

Nick was rummaging through the counters, looking for anything loot-able, when he suddenly heard something shift from the corner of the room.

Nick froze, instantly on alert. The sound had come from a large pile of debris near a half-collapsed wall. There was no electricity, obviously, but Nick found his eyesight naturally switching into the night vision spectrum as he struggled to look into the shadowed corner.

 _Handy, that._

Something was moving inside the pile of debris, waking up. Whatever it was didn't sound too small. Rats, probably. Normally Nick wouldn't be afraid of some rats scurrying around, but given how his day was going so far he decided to err on the side of caution. He looked around for something he might use as a weapon, eventually locating a broken metal pole that looked like it might have once been part of a clothes rack. The broken part was sharp enough. It'd have to work.

And it might be entirely unnecessary. Still, Nick inched closer to the debris pile. He heard a scurrying, clicking sound. Rats, gotta be.

"Hey!" he shouted, deciding maybe he could scare it off. "Whatever you are, scram!"

The shifting stopped.

Nick lowered the pole a few inches. He hesitated, taking a step back, wondering if maybe it was gone.

Suddenly, something exploded from the pile of debris, a giant blur of pink and teeth that threw itself at him. Nick cried out and threw his arm up. He managed to knock it aside and throw himself backward, stumbling, still not quite used to his new robotic limbs.

The thing fell on its back but quickly recovered. It _was_ a rodent, but it was the biggest rodent Nick had ever seen, closer to the size of your average dog. It was hairless and pink, and it had huge front teeth that looked like it could easily rip him in two. The claws were long and curved, and skittered across the wooden floor as the creature prepared itself for another go at him.

Knowing this thing was spoiling for a fight (and possibly looking at him for lunch, not that Nick thought his new synthetic skin and innards would be all that tasty) Nick aimed the broken metal pole like a spear and advanced slowly on the rodent. He was reminded of a time back when he was still in uniform in Chicago, and had to corner a rabid dog that had just killed its owner.

The giant rodent lounged at him, and Nick stabbed the pole forward. The broken sharp edge managed to catch the rodent in the belly right as it jumped at him. Giant teeth were suddenly precariously close to Nick's face as the pole slid in, and Nick suddenly found himself with a skewered rat.

The thing still thrashed madly, even as it bled out on the pole. The thing was also ridiculously heavy, and it took all the strength in Nick's new robotic limbs to heave the thing off of him. The teeth had managed to make contact with his shoulder and nick through his nice new shirt. The teeth tore off a good three-inch layer of skin before Nick could push the creature off of him.

Nick didn't feel any pain, which was odd. But at the same time, words flashed across the invisible screen in front of his eyes as a diagnostic test was run, assessing the damage and recording the loss. No major structures impaired, just a skin tear.

While his body ran through its damage assessment, Nick looked down at the screaming creature as it died. He didn't feel much pity for it. If he could breathe, he'd be breathing hard now. He'd just had the scare of his life.

What _was_ that thing? Nick had never seen any rodent so large. He was pretty sure they didn't make them that big, not under normal circumstances.

But Nick was quickly starting to suspect that he was not under anything like normal circumstances.

Again, that question flew around his brain, that big question. _Just what the hell is going on!?_

Just keep moving forward. Gotta keep moving. Nightfall wasn't too far away, and he wasn't exactly keen to find out if there were more creatures like the one here. He needed to leave this town and find civilization. Boston. Home.

He left the creature and the boutique store.

By the time the sun had set, Nick was well on the other side of town. He'd been hoping to find some sort of civilization he could work with-a working phone booth, an abandoned car, but it was no dice. The only abandoned cars he found had been blown out in the same explosion that seemed to have obliterated the town, and rust had long turned them into nothing but junk. The buildings started to get sparse as Nick found himself on a small, lonely highway. He took heart, however, when he found a half-broken highway sign telling him that Boston was in fifty miles.

Not the worst distance, assuming he could eventually find some transportation. As the sky got darker and the stars came out, Nick was grateful he couldn't seem to feel temperature anymore than he could pain. He had no idea if it was cold or hot out right now, but that was just one less thing to worry about.

Nick was walking down the highway for several hours when he caught something miraculous-the flicker of fire light.

 _Thank heavens!_ Nick thought as he picked up his pace, heading toward the light that was further down the highway. _Civilization at last!_

Nick never thought he'd heard anything more beautiful than the murmur of voices that grew as he approached what appeared to be a camp on the middle of the highway. There were a half-dozen people scattered around a large fire appeared to be made out of wooden debris. They were dressed in a mix of worn leathers and threadbare clothes. They looked like bikers, though Nick didn't see any motorcycles around.

"Hey, fellas!" Nick called out as he approached the camp. Finally, things were starting to look up.

That is, until Nick suddenly saw the steely-eyes of a line of pistols aiming toward his face. Almost in unison, all of the campers had abruptly halted their conversation and rounded on him, weapons out.

"Whoa!" Nick threw his hands in the air. "I come in peace, and all that. Chill, fellas. I could actually use your help."

"He's an Institute Synth!" One of the campers hollered back to the others. "Open fire!"

Well, that didn't sound good. Fortunately this wasn't the first time Nick had suddenly found himself used for target practice. His robotic limbs responded to his command and he jumped out of the way, ducking behind a nearby burnt-out car just as the zip of bullets flew his way.

"Hey!" Nick shouted as the bullets took a pause. "I'm not-I'm not trying to hurt you! I know I might look a bit strange-"

"Kill him!" the campers cried, and the bullets resumed, pinging against the metal vehicle.

Perfect. As if his day couldn't get any better. Nick was trapped behind this car, clutching only a broken metal pole that might as well be a leaf against the bullets that were headed his way. It was only a matter of time before the goons circled around the car and put an end to his new, brief existence.

While Nick took a moment of self-pity, he also began to notice a hissing noise, something that _wasn't_ coming from the bullets. In fact, it seemed to be coming from inside the car. And it was getting louder.

Nick knew that sound. He didn't like that sound.

There was another rusted car a bit further behind him. As the hissing sound got louder, Nick knew he didn't have much choice but to risk it. As soon as he heard a pause in the gunfire he jumped out, hunched low as he flew toward the other vehicle. He had just reached the other one when the first car exploded, the atomic engine igniting after being battered too many times with bullets. The explosion roared, causing many of the campers to fall backward in surprise. There knockdown didn't last long, however. Plenty of them got back on their feet quickly. Would they ever run out of bullets?

Nick wasn't sure what he could do here. He may be in this strange, bizarre world, somehow trapped inside a mechanical body, but he didn't want to die.

Nick peaked out behind the vehicle toward the campers, trying to get a sense of the situation, wondering if they could still be reasoned with.

"This has all been a misunderstanding!" Nick called out. "There's no need to fire at me!"

Suddenly, something whizzed over Nick's head. A bullet, but it was coming from the _other_ direction. Nick didn't even have time to be surprised before one of the campers-the guy who was probably their leader-let out an abrupt cry and fell to the ground.

The other campers paused, looking at their fallen comrade, astonished.

Then, a dozen more bullets flew overhead, knocking over another three of the campers. Blood spurted as they fell to the ground.

The remaining campers split, half of them turning tail and fleeing as soon as they realized they were no longer the aggressors. The other valiant flew looked around wildly amidst the trees and darkness and empty road, vainly struggling to find the source of the gunfire.

Nick identified it quicker than the others, tracking the bullets and locating the source as coming from a small slope off the edge of the road, in a patch of burnt-looking trees. His night vision allowed him to see other people moving around in the darkness, bearing down on the campers. Since they weren't shooting at Nick, he decided to call them friends.

The other party took care of the campers in short over, coming down the slope and picking them off with practiced ease. Nick wasn't complaining, although he regretted the loss of life. If he had been back home, in the land of the familiar, a gang shootout like this would have caused a whole mess of paperwork and headaches for guys like Nick and his fellow cops.

One of the members of the second party peeled off from the others and approached Nick, an automatic rifle resting easily in his hands. He was young, probably barely in his twenties. He wore patched clothes and had the hardened look of someone who is used to working out in the sun for extended periods of time.

"Hey there," the young man said, "Just wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?" asked Nick.

"For distracting them raiders," the man replied. "We'd been wondering how to deal with them for awhile now, strategizing and whatnot, so that our caravan could continue on this road. But you provided the perfect distraction, saved us a lot of effort. So, thanks."

There were so many things wrong with that sentence that Nick had a hard time what to pick at first. Eventually, he decided on: "You called them raiders?"

"Well, yeah," the young man said, shrugging his shoulders like it was obvious. "What'd you think they were? They'd been camping in that road for awhile now, attacking and looting any caravans that came their way. This is the best route in and out of Boston, you know. We're from Oberland Station, on our way to Diamond City."

The young man tilted his head then, looking at Nick more closely. "So you're a robot," the man deduced. "That's sure odd-I wasn't sure from a distance. You sure talk like a human. But you look like a Synth. You're not a Synth though, that much is obvious-every Synth I've met has always attacked on sight, and they were nowhere near as eloquent as you."

"Well, thank you kindly for that," said Nick, not entirely sure how else to respond. "I'm afraid I don't even know what a Synth is."

"You're kidding," the man said. "What the hell are you anyway? What's your story?"

"I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you," said Nick.

The young man grinned, "You'd be surprised the crazy stories you hear wandering the Commonwealth," he said. He gestured with a rifle, "You can tell me on the way. My name's Jim, by the way, what's yours?"

"Nick. Nick Valentine."


End file.
